April 22, 2006

Condi's Leaks

by emptywheel

I don't know whether to believe the allegations of the defendants in the AIPAC case, that Condi leaked sensitive information to them and that the leaks they did receive may have been authorized (though I gotta say, it's sounding an awful lot like another leak case I can think of).

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense
information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a
lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist's
lawyer said Friday.

[snip]

Rosen's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the testimony of Rice and others is
needed to show that some of the top officials in U.S. government
approved of disclosing sensitive information to the defendants and that
the leaks may have been authorized.

But the allegation made me think of a passage from Woodward's Plan of Attack, a passage I've been meaning to call more attention to (I paid for this piece of shill book, damnit, and I'm going to get as much mileage out of it as I can).

The passage appears in the section discussing Bush's decision to bomb Dora Farms before the deadline he had given to Saddam, in the hopes of killing Saddam before the start of the war. Bush calls adviser after adviser into the Oval Office to present the intelligence and receives their counsel on whether to authorize the attack. Finally, Bush kicks everyone but Dick out of the office, at which point Dick vocally supports the attack. At 7:12 P.M., Bush makes the decision to start the war.

So here's the passage:

Rice placed a quick call at 7:30 P.M. to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli finance minister, about another matter. He said he already knew about the war and wished it would be fast and "bloodless." (393) [page reference corrected thanks to a reader's sharp eye]

Condi then goes onto call David Manning, the British national security adviser, officially giving him and Tony Blair notice that the war is about to start.

Hoo-boy. Where to start with this passage?

I may be reading too much into this passage. But if I read it correctly, it says that before we called the Brits, our closest ally in the war, to inform them the war was about to begin, we called the Israelis. Well, that's not too surprising. After all, the Israelis need to be on defense against Iraqi attacks, so they need to know about the war, just as surely as the Brits do, right?

But she wasn't calling to inform the Israelis officially.

"Rice placed a quick call ... to Benjamin Netanyahu ... about another matter."

Rice wasn't calling about the war. She was calling about something else. Maybe, between arranging shock and awe in Iraq and alerting the Brits, Condi decided to plan a golf date?

Furthermore, she wasn't calling official Israeli channels to alert them to the impending war. She wasn't calling Sharon or his national security adviser. She was calling Bibi Netanyahu, who as finance minister had absolutely nothing to do with the war. But who, as the most extreme of the Likudniks, probably had everything to do with the war.

And that's not all. Condi called Bibi 18 minutes after Bush decided to go to war. And somehow, in that 18 minutes, Bibi had already received notice about the war. "[H]e already knew about the war."

Somehow, in the first twenty minutes after Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, at least two out of the maybe twenty people (including Dick, Rice, Rummy, Karen Hughes, Powell, Dan Bartlett, Tommy Franks, Richard Myers, Andy Card, Michael Gerson, Stephen Hadley, Saul the CIA agent, and some more CIA people) who were in on the decision decided to unofficially inform the most hawkish of the Israelis, Bibi Netanyahu, about the impending start of the war.

Like I said, I'm not sure what to think about the allegations that Condi was leaking to the same people that Larry Franklin has already been sentenced for leaking to. But given this passage from Woodward's book, I find the allegation plausible.

Or Bibi was the one who talked Deadeye Dick into invading Iraq long before the fact (and probably before the 2000 election): "Think about it, Dick. You get rid of Saddam, Israel is secure, you have a base for the army you want to station here -- and there's all that lovely oil for your employers. Of course they called Bibi -- it's better than even money he was "the architect" on this one.

Fair point. So whoever told Sharon was in the right. And Condi, who apparently didn't have anything better to do with her pre-war moments, broached it with Bibi. Which I still don't get, not in any case.

I get the idea that the people who subpeoned the condiliar are claiming that the condiliar is their source, and that the condiliar had authorization to leak the information the defendants are accused of diemminating

so, what we have is a case where a leak (or authorized dissemination) is the cause of criminal charges (kinda rules out legal dissemination)

this case blows the libby defense right out of the water

an order to declassify information can't be secret. either the info is no longer worthy of being classified and it is disseminated to the general public, or the info is still worthy of classified status and it sholdn't be disseminated to the general public

I may be misreading it, but I think they're making a slightly different point--that Condi had been their source in the past and that the leaks through Franklin may be related, authorized leaks. That is, Condi wanted them to have classified info in the past, so they expected that this classified information was also authorized.

I'm not suggesting the Bibi call is directly related. But it's a moment when the Bush Administration is sharing highly classified information via backchannels to the most conservative elements in Israel. Similar behavior, not necessarily related (though if you buy the notion that Bibi was largely behind the push for war, then it is probably related in some sense).

You're so much craftier than I. I was thinking it might be as simple as Dick to Bibi. 18 minutes. Not a long time.

Actually, to his shilly credit, I think Woodward presented the passage for just this reason--to ask wtf Condi was doing making non-war related calls at this time. If so, then his detail about Dick being alone with Bush raised my suspicion.

Sometime after 4pm - The Dora Farm intel gets to the White House (and Tenet starts talking with exclamation points).

5:40pm - Cheney summons Libby to the Oval Office. In a fascinating bit of unintentional irony, Cheney worries about the quality of the intel. Bush asks everybody in the room if they would "do it". Woodward record the ensuing discussion. Everybody is in favor of the attack except Cheney who didn't seem happy and still has reservations (and Libby's opinion is not recorded). Cheney is worried about Israel (and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia and Turkey). Woodward appears to quotes Cheney (his writing is sort of sloppy here):

Do we have our defenses ready for Israel? We promised Israel we would defend them. Tommy's plan has a defense, but the plan wasn't implemented yet.

6:00pm - Card calls Gerson and tells him to come to the Oval Office at 6:30 with the speech. Nothing else appears to happen in Woodward's narrative until Gerson shows up with the speech.

6:30pm? - Gerson shows up with the speech. Bush asks Saul (a mid-level CIA operative) what he thinks. Saul has no idea what to say to that (who can blame him?) and responds by apologizing for putting the President in such a tough spot. Bush says, "Don't worry, I'm the decider" (I paraphrase slightly). Bush kicks everybody else out of the room so Cheney can tell him what to do.

7:12pm - The other come back in and the president said, "Let's go". Myers calls Franks. Rumsfeld "butchers" the speech. Gerson puts a 9/ll reference into the speech (can't miss a chance to wave that bloody flag).

7:30 - Rice makes the call to Netanyahu.

My take on that is Woodward is telegraphing who informed the Israelis first. Cheney was the one who was concerned about Israel. Cheney specifically summoned Libby and Woodward makes a point of noting that Libby joined the Oval Office group, but he doesn't mention anything else about Libby. Woodward specifically says that Rice was calling Netanyahu on another matter, but Netanyahu already knows about the war. Woodward doesn't say Rice was surprised that he already knew, but he quotes Netanyahu's response. We can assume that Rice told him that for a specific reason. I think we're supposed to ask ourselves why Cheney called Libby in.

I suppose the obvious answer is that Cheney was accustomed to using Libby to send sensitive messages to various people. In one case it was to share that intelligence report with Miller to try to support the Iraq's-getting-nukes prewar line. In this case he would be dispatching Libby to alert the Likud wing of the cabal that war was imminent.

Just like nations have intelligence sharing agreements, Cheney/Rummy Iraq War Cabal had an intelligence sharing agreement with certain right wing groups in Israel. It makes perfect sense. After all if it come out of the Whitehouse it isn't really illegal. The president has the power to share the most sensitive of our secrets with foreign parties and so he has the power to delegate this to people like Cheney, Libby, or Rice.

If this was the way business was really being done then the AIPAC defendants had every reason to think that when other people at lower levels showed up offering to share sensitive U.S. Government information it was totally kosher.

It works as a defense. Not only is it cleaver, but it might even be true. We'll never know though because of course the government can't let a trial happen that proves this sort of stuff.

So how to get out of this bind? If the AIPAC folk were really passing authorized messages from the U.S. Government to the Israeli Government, then they are not spooks but sort of "undercover diplomats". Perhaps we could just declare them persona non grata, deport them to Israel, and avoid a trial that way.

I suppose the obvious answer is that Cheney was accustomed to using Libby to send sensitive messages to various people. In one case it was to share that intelligence report with Miller to try to support the Iraq's-getting-nukes prewar line. In this case he would be dispatching Libby to alert the Likud wing of the cabal that war was imminent.

Just like nations have intelligence sharing agreements, Cheney/Rummy Iraq War Cabal had an intelligence sharing agreement with certain right wing groups in Israel. It makes perfect sense. After all if it come out of the Whitehouse it isn't really illegal. The president has the power to share the most sensitive of our secrets with foreign parties and so he has the power to delegate this to people like Cheney, Libby, or Rice.

If this was the way business was really being done then the AIPAC defendants had every reason to think that when other people at lower levels showed up offering to share sensitive U.S. Government information it was totally kosher.

It works as a defense. Not only is it cleaver, but it might even be true. We'll never know though because of course the government can't let a trial happen that proves this sort of stuff.

So how to get out of this bind? If the AIPAC folk were really passing authorized messages from the U.S. Government to the Israeli Government, then they are not spooks but sort of "undercover diplomats". Perhaps we could just declare them persona non grata, deport them to Israel, and avoid a trial that way.

Ah, William, I hadn't re-read it that closely. I think you're onto something.

I'd need to go back and spend a long time with this, but I get the sense that if one paid enough attention to Woodward's conventions of citation, you could figure out what was background, what was on the record interview (and with whom), and what was extrapolation. But at least for much of hte war decision stuff, we can guess that it comes from Woodward's on the record interview with Bush. Which suggests the picture of Dick as hesitant to go to war comes from Bush's "real" impression reinfored by whatever Dick gruffly said off the record (and/or Libby dutifully parrotted off the record).

I wonder if anybody's thought to ask Woodward why the story about the Iraqi Foreign Minister (Sabri) isn't in "Plan of Attack". It happened right in the middle of the events he chronicles in the book. A whole bunch of people that he interviewed knew about it. Did they all "forget" to tell him or did he leave it out because it messed up the narrative flow? Enquiring minds want to know...

The bulk of the information that Lawrence Franklin was sharing with F0-1 through FO-3, and the AIPAC cutouts, was about IRAN NOT IRAQ. Read the Lawrence Franklin indictment: http://files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/dod/usfrnklin80205ind.pdf

Please bear in mind that Col. Franklin was the DIA Iran desk officer. While he was involved with the the goings-on at OSP surrounding the Niger Yellowcake documents, his primary duties concerned Iran WMDs. That's the same focus as Valerie Plame.

It only stands to reason, then, that the classified information Condi was similarly sharing with Dr. Steven Rosen, AIPAC Iran expert (which we can presume made its way to Mossad) was also about Iran.

As Rosen's lawyer, Abbe Lowell said. "On day one, Secretary of State Rice tells him certain info and on day two one of the conspirators tells him the same thing or something less volatile." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/21/AR2006042101648_pf.html

Seems to me, therefore, that Condi was involved in the same effort to spread the war in Iraq into Iran. That would make her a hub of the wheel in both espionage cases. Her proximity to Bush makes her a particularly key link in the conspiracy. The AIPAC-OSP case is all about Iran, specifically how Israel was trying to draw the U.S. into a war with Iran. What was the nasty surprise about Iran (or was it Iraq?) that Condi was trying to cook up with the Israelis in the Spring of 2003?

Further circumstantial evidence for this interpretation is also provided by the parallel efforts by Rosen and Franklin to plant stories about Iranian WMDs at the NYT. See, my post at DKos:

2/2/06 FBI Probes AIPAC Leak of Classified Iran Docs to NYT

www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/2/14024/94613

The FBI is probing an effort by two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to disclose classified information to the New York Times. This appears to have been part of an effort to cultivate Times reporters in order to selectively leak classified Iran WMD documents.

Larry Franklin, a former Iran desk officer at the Pentagon, recently pleaded guilty to trading classified papers with Israeli intelligence officers and employees at AIPAC. Two AIPAC employees accused of working with Franklin are now being tried in federal court in Alexandria, VA.

This prosecution follows the much publicized scandal involving ex-NYT reporter, Judy Miller, as the conduit of false information about Iraq WMD.

The Times is burying this story breaking today at the bottom of its on-line National page.

MORE BELOW . . .

leveymg’s diary :: ::

In a short article in its on-line edition, the NYT is reporting that Times staff have been questioned by federal investigators in recent days about efforts by AIPAC employees to leak classified documents.

Two NYT reporters were approached by AIPAC employees with classified documents. Larry Franklin, a former Iran desk officer at the Pentagon Office of Special Plans(OSP), was recently convicted of trading secret documents with Israeli intelligence officers and representatives of AIPAC in Washington, DC.

This raises a question about the nature of the documents. Was this the classified material that Franklin himself had salted into Pentagon files at the behest of his handler, the Mossad Chief of Station at the Israeli Embassy in DC?

The Franklin indictment states that the former DoD officer incorporated changes suggested by a foreign intelligence officer into documents on Iran he was preparing for OSP. See, www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/15/12176/9231 also see Franklin Indictment, pp 23-24, para 6. (”FO3" is Naor Gilon, the former Mossad chief who fled the country after word of the FBI’s investigation into Franklin and AIPAC was first leaked during the summer of 2004.) physics911.net/franklinpdf2.pdf

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — Federal agents contacted two reporters from The New York Times on Wednesday seeking information about a former Pentagon official and two representatives of a pro-Israel lobbying group who have been at the center of a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

The requests were made to David S. Cloud and Steven R. Weisman, reporters in The Times’s Washington bureau. Mr. Cloud was asked about possible contacts he had in the spring of 2003 with representatives of the lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. At the time, Mr. Cloud was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

SNIP

A government official who has been briefed on the matter said that agents had contacted reporters from several news organizations.

The agents, the official said, are trying to determine whether reporters received national security information intended to influence their reporting on the Middle East.

SNIP

The requests follow the Jan. 23 sentencing of Lawrence A. Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst and expert on Iran. Mr. Franklin’s sentencing, to a term of more than 12 years after a guilty plea, refocused the case on two former Aipac officials, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, who are scheduled to go on trial in April. Each has pleaded not guilty.

If this is what it appears to be, here is additional proof of Track Two of the effort by a neocon cabal and Israeli intelligence to plant false WMD data with the intent of driving the United States into an expanding war in the Middle-East.

SNIP

Was Condi cooking the books with the Israelis on Iran or was it Iraq WMDs? Did Bush authorize that leak, too? Either way, if Lowell is being factual, then it seems more likely Condi is going to jail than to the top job at the White House.